The First Day!

On Wednesday morning I was greeted with 17 eager little faces awaiting the start of their adventure in education. I felt a little more prepared than I did last year but I soon discovered that you can never be completely prepared for kindergarten. This new group of students brings with them new and interesting challenges.

My first day was met with much anticipation, preparation and excitement on my part. I have always LOVED the first few days of school. After about an hour spent with my new kindergarteners I realized that an entire day with them may just end up being very stressful, for them and myself. I was right - not even halfway through the morning I was getting comments like, "Is it lunchtime yet?", "when to we get to play?", "this is boring," "when do I get to go home - I think my mom misses me too much for me to be here," "when do we get to eat all of those m&ms that we brought", "when can we do art?" It was about 10:00 am when I realized that it was going to be a very long day!

Luckily we didn't have any issues with lunch or missing students which was nice and the afternoon went a lot more smoothly than the morning. As the end of the day approached I was acutely aware of the fact that this year is going to be a lot different than last year. I have a new crop of kindergarteners that are at very different academic levels and that this year may be a bit more challenging. But with that said I anticipate and hope that with the difficult challenges ahead of me I will be able to see the rewards at the end of the year and look forward to how much they will learn and grow.

The second day was a lot better than the first which was extremely encouraging. It gave me hope that this year was going to be just fine! I will adjust to each of them as they adjust to me and we will have a whole heap of fun learning so many new things. I can say now that I really look forward to teaching this group of youngsters and am glad that I have the first week under my belt.

My wonderful group of kindergarteners!!

It has Begun!!

Kindergarten is a little over a week away but my room has begun to take shape. I revamped and rearranged a few elements in my classroom to make sure that I utilize my space more efficiently. I am in the proccess of going through stacks and stacks and stacks of books. I am putting them into categories and throwing away some that are really old. I decided that this year I would not have an overwhelming amount of books for the kindergarteners to look through - it was too much and what I ended up with was a bunch of ruined books and destructive looking bookshelves at the end of the year. No Thanks!

As I approach the beginning of the schoolyear I am not as stressed as I was last year and am looking forward to getting my new crop of students. I know that this year I will be better equipped with the skills to teach these youngsters more efficiently and effectively.

Now to the task at hand - preparing my room which has always been exciting for me but stressful as well. I will post pictures as soon as my room is complete.